Quote Originally Posted by VictorCharlie View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing View Post
And it says

"One person gaining in wealth does note [sic] equate or necessitate one person losing wealth."

And that's true. Total wealth keeps increasing in capitalist economic systems. And that's a great thing. The problem comes when all that wealth accrues to just a small percentage of the total population. That's when the economy becomes unbalanced and ceases to function well, the situation we have now.
Wealth isn't finite though. So if you agree with the quoted part then you should also agree that you can raise the wages/wealth of one level w/o lowering anothers. The appropriate policy discussions for how to get lower and middle class increased wealth/wages would be for these groups to put more value on not going to prison, not having children to they are ready, education, acquiring job skills, saving money, financial planning and deferred gratification but blaming wealthy people and creating a victim mentality sells better for the polls.
You can't just create wealth out of nothing. Even if you print money (in normal economic conditions, current situation not remotely normal) you just devalue it. Wealth is earned by increased economic activity and productivity. That wealth is then distributed through the economic system. And if it's distributed very unequally, like it is currently, it leads to a fucked up economic system, like we have now.